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Did Early Humans Invent Hot Pot in Geothermal Pools?

atlasobscura.com

30 points by alikim 5 years ago · 30 comments

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heisenzombie 5 years ago

Here are Māori cooking in geothermal hot springs

https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/40251/cooking-food-in-ho...

Obviously much more recent, but shows that when you live around a bunch of free hot water, it’s a practical cooking method.

andygcook 5 years ago

My partner loves hot pot, so I bought her a home hot pot kit for Christmas last year. At first she didn’t want to use it at all which was disappointing, but then it become a huge hit when all the restaurants closed down for Covid. Home hot pot has now turned into our fun date night tradition on Friday’s where we eat together for a few hours while talking.

Here’s our list of ingredients we like if anyone is curious. Would love to hear other recommendations to try too:

King oyster mushrooms, Shitaki mushrooms, Tofu skin dried, Frozen bean curd rolls frozen, Fried tofu, Bean curd nuggets, Choripdong Oriental Style Noodles, Bok Choy, Broccoli, Corn on cob, Lotus root, Beef (thin sliced), Shrimp

Part of the fun is plating the ingredients before eating and working on our presentation skills together. It’s really rewarding when we can make it look like they do at the restaurant.

After some trial and error, we also recommend the Little Lamb broths. They comes in different spice levels and taste just like the restaurant. All you need to do is add six cups of water: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Sheep-Soup-Base-235-Grams/dp/B...

FYI that’s not an affiliate link, I just like hot pot and wanted to share.

(Edit - formatting)

  • pki-ask 5 years ago

    You can also try adding fish balls (can find at Asian supermarkets). Another is Napa cabbage - it sounds quite plain but is surprisingly good in a hot pot. Also try getting a fish based bbq sauce (it’s a Taiwanese brand), and mixing that with sesame oil, soy sauce, chili oil, ginger/green onions/cilantro/garlic, finely chopped. For noodles, I would use udon, hands down. Lastly, adding steamed rice to the broth at the end with beaten egg to make a congee is excellent.

  • bobbiechen 5 years ago

    I'm also a big fan of doing hot pot at home. It's a nice social thing to do since you can't really rush it.

    Besides beef, thinly sliced lamb and pork are also great. I recommend getting a manual frozen meat slicer like https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41Po3rfCn6L.... It pays for itself very quickly since you can just buy any meat, including nicer cuts, at the bulk price - I think mine literally paid for itself in the first session.

  • contingencies 5 years ago

    Coriander / potato and other tubers / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houttuynia_cordata#Zhe'ergen / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goji / rice noodles / wood-ear mushrooms / tomato / xiaogua (小瓜; similar to zucchini) / beansprouts / carrot / spring onion / spinach / cabbage / garlic.

  • ketzo 5 years ago

    Are lotus roots the ones that come as very flat circles? Was introduced to them the first time I ever had hot pot -- SO good.

  • carlmr 5 years ago

    >After some trial and error, we also recommend the Little Lamb broths. They comes in different spice levels and taste just like the restaurant.

    Little (fat) sheep is in fact one of the biggest Chinese hot pot chains. It might be THE broth from the restaurant.

stanrivers 5 years ago

Like, there is no doubt that humans probably noticed that hot water in the ground cooked things that fell into them.

But, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it was probably someone with boiled water from that whole fire thing we figured out a while ago that invented the revolutionary idea of putting more than just a dead animal into the water.

Just a guess though.

  • tt433 5 years ago

    I believe the authors are postulating about the behavior of pre-human ancestors without the capability to generate fires on demand. “The paper opens a window to stop focusing on there being fire or there not being fire, to say there are other ways to cook and we should be looking for them.”

kyuudou 5 years ago

Later humans in Japan did using onsen, which is basically the same thing IIRC: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200824-the-japanese-villag...

Definitely plausible.

alikimOP 5 years ago

And the relevant article in PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/09/14/2004532117

johndoe42377 5 years ago

Obviously no.

It is a stupid idea from Jungian and Froidian "psychology" that symbols have been invented once and then propagated everywhere, and that this supposed propagation is an evidence of migration pathways and relationship.

Same stupidity goes with linguistics - if something is called by the same name in the different parts of the world, there must be an infallible evidence of migration and relation.

No, everything related to the constraints of the environment (Nature) has been invented many times independently. Basic symbols based on geometric shapes too.

  • tt433 5 years ago

    I fail to see how this is "obvious." By the logic that nature invents things many times, isn't it possible some humans at some point did this? Obviously they didn't call it "hot pot," the article doesn't actually suggest that, it's used as a shortcut in a headline to communicate a point. Your suggestion of a link to Jung and Freud makes no sense to me...

    • johndoe42377 5 years ago

      Generally speaking, humanities was a mistake. These "scientists" memed the main principle of science from scientific evidence to scientific, or more precisely - sectarian consensus.

      Peer review is not by any means criterion for even approximation to the truth. The article in question should have been reviewed exactly like I did.

      • tt433 5 years ago

        You didn't read the article clearly and you're ranting about unrelated things

      • gota 5 years ago

        You'll excuse me when I say you sound like you have zero experience at reputable levels of academic "humanities".

        Humanities are not exact sciences for a single reason - they comprise too many variables for a primate brain to reason about. There's no god mandated set of borders defining "types" of science.

        There are fields so complex that they have to be dealt in so high an abstraction level that we call them subjective. Absolutely does not mean that the objects they study are unworthy of study. Precisely the opposite, in fact.

        Also does not mean that, even if a portion of people are faking, there are no valuable insights coming from the scientific field.

        I'll point out that there are a huge number of "fake efforts" in the hard sciences as well. Cost of doing science at scale with bad incentive engines.

        Finally, if your issue with the "humanities" is with a perceived politization of the academia, I'd suggest formally educating yourself in those subjects and taking a place in said politics instead of, you know, acting like a reactionary teen or twentysumthin. No offense, but complaining about politization from the outside is a useless venting effort.

        • jfengel 5 years ago

          The 19th and 20th centuries were extraordinary periods where "hard" sciences gave us amazing things, but technologists like the ones on this site are often fooled into thinking that those are the only things that matter. Any problems involving human beings are theoretically "reducible" to physics problems, and therefore only physics matters -- even if we don't actually know how to perform that reduction.

          Questions of how human beings organize and treat each other are immensely complex, and of enormous importance. They're incredibly hard to study, and what study we can do is only in its infancy. But it's equally infantile to declare that it's irrelevant. And oddly, for people who pride themselves on their intellectual prowess, those who do tend to make it on the basis of a cursory "study" rather than serious engagement.

        • johndoe42377 5 years ago

          I suggest not to assume anything about other people.

          I have studied religions among other things, so I know very well what sectarian consensus is and how exactly it works to maintain a high social status.

          Humanities and theoretical"sciences" are sects by every possible definition.

          I have studied philosophy too.

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